Abstract
We are writing this short commentary to clarify the matching process we implemented in Eccles et al. (2014), which King (2025) analyzed in his recent publication in the Journal of Management Scientific Reports. Specifically, when feasible, Eccles et al. (2014) match companies at the subsector level. If subsector matching is not possible, Eccles et al. (2014) then match companies at the sector level. The matching process in Eccles et al. (2014) does not require a caliper of 0.01, primarily due to the limited size of our firm pool. Instead, we match with the closest available firm on the specified firm characteristics.
King (2025) applies a caliper of 0.01 and concludes that it is not possible to perform exact industry matching with such a restrictive caliper. Consequently, our sample contains more matches precisely because we did not impose this caliper requirement. We were surprised to see King persist in framing his analysis around the use of a caliper, despite earlier clarifications that this was not the matching process applied in Eccles et al. (2014).
We speculate that the source of his confusion relates to Footnote 7 of Eccles et al. (2014). This footnote, as we have previously clarified, refers to an alternative matching process that we explored in early stages of the paper, which did not require matching within the same subsector or sector and instead expanded the pool of firms to include all U.S. firms, excluding the 90 firms in the high sustainability group. This matching process was not included in the published paper and is not part of any of the tables. The inclusion of Footnote 7 in the published paper perhaps should have explained this in more detail to avoid the impression that it described the actual matching process of the main analysis in Eccles et al. (2014).
To the extent that the footnote has led to any misunderstanding, it should be understood as a condensed reference to an exploratory process, not as a description of the matching procedure ultimately used in Eccles et al. (2014). In the effort to meet manuscript length requirements, some details were inevitably condensed, especially in lengthy footnotes. It is worth noting that our main analysis of the organizational processes of measurement, stakeholder engagement, governance, and long-term orientation presented in the main tables of the paper (Tables 2–6) originally included separate panels with multivariate models accounting for various financial characteristics and subsector impacts. These extensive analyses, along with detailed discussions, were also omitted in the final paper due to space constraints.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
